


The Dragon Whisperer

by jedishampoo



Category: Saiyuki
Genre: Alternate Universe - Creatures & Monsters, Everyone's in love with Kougaiji, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-19
Updated: 2015-07-19
Packaged: 2018-04-10 03:40:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,102
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4375850
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jedishampoo/pseuds/jedishampoo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Monster-reporter Yaone had run away from one family long ago and wasn't really looking for another.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Dragon Whisperer

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the 7thnight_smut exchange on dreamwidth last year. I realized I'd never posted this anywhere else! The prompt was for a videographer and reporter, and so I wrote monster fic romance?

The first time Yaone went to Professor Kougaiji's laboratory was purely for business.  
  
Still, as the limo crawled through one last hairpin curve up the mountain road and the estate came into view, she thought fancifully that it looked like a castle. Silly, she knew, but the building was stony and huge and had bunches of pointy roofs, and nestled in the burnt and scarred Rocky Mountain foothills like something sinister, like something out of an old Dracula movie.  
  
That would make good editorial copy, Yaone thought, and scribbled it on her notepad. _Complete with mad scientist_ , she wrote.  
  
She'd brought a digital recorder, but she didn't want to say things like that aloud and piss off the driver, who was, after all, one of the professor's employees. Minions. Whatever. There was no way she was going to get shuffled off back to Denver before she'd even gotten the biggest interview of her career.  
  
The road ended at a set of even more movie-perfect tall, metal gates, thronged with at least a hundred people. Many were security guards, both military and private. More minions. Some were mere tourists, grinning and posing for photos like they were standing outside the White House. And of course there were priests of the Church, looking like Buddhist monks in their dirt-colored robes and sandals, but they were being decidedly non-Buddhist by waving their arms in the Chant of Abomination.  
  
Yaone resisted the urge to duck her head as the limo pulled through the gates. The priests couldn't see her through the tinted windows, and it wouldn't matter if they could. She was now Yaone Max, independent adult, and she chased Behemoths for WMN. No longer was she a young, virginal monster-munchie.  
  
Still, her knees knocked when she thought about going this alone. Dr. Kougaiji's organization hadn't even allowed her to bring her usual cameraman, saying instead they'd provide her with one of their own people. Igor? And the motions of the priests, crossed arms rising and falling, resonated with the primal vestiges of her upbringing, those feelings of wonder and fear that even counseling and higher education hadn't been able to banish from her deepest psyche. The rapture in their faces and the flow of their fingers could almost make her believe the molten core of the ancient Earth and the even more ancient stars really did have power over their gestures.  
  
Plus, the whole thing with Dr. Kougaiji yesterday had felt creepily like being Chosen.  
  
When the car stopped, the door was opened by a tall, beefy guy with dark hair. He smiled at her, crinkling a scar that ran across his nose, and offered her a hand out of the car. "Miz Max?" he said in a deep voice.  
  
Yaone took the hand, for all it looked like it could crush her own, and let the man pull her out. She raised an eyebrow at his tight jeans and even tighter black tee-shirt. MINUS WAVE, it said. Yaone figured it must be the name of some indie rock band she'd never heard of. Whatever the case, it showed off his biceps, and they were impressive. "You don't look like CIA," she told him.  
  
"I'm Dokugakuji, your cameraman. Nice to meetcha," he said in an East-Coast accent, and gave her hand a quick shake before releasing it. "C'mon inside. I saw you on TV, you know."  
  
So this guy -- was Dokugakuji his first name or his last name? -- was the reason she hadn't been allowed to bring Gojyo with her. "I'm always on TV," she sniffed.  
  
"Huh," Dokugakuji said, sounding like he might be laughing. She sniffed again and followed him down a sidewalk. Someone had planted some flowers along its borders -- geraniums, petunias, colorful summer things -- trying to brighten the blighted-looking browns. It was strangely lonely and quiet, though, like this giant, heavily guarded place was merely someone's house in the foothills. She couldn't help but notice the loud clicks of her own heels on the pavement as they walked.  
  
They arrived at a small, side-looking door with a numeric lock, where Dokugakuji beeped a dozen or so numbers into the keypad. A longer beep sounded and the door opened. Then he led her through the entrance into a cozy, wood-paneled hallway, and then to another key-coded door.  
  
Dokugakuji turned to look at her, his fingers hovering over the numbered pad. His eyes were oddly dark and soft. He reminded her of someone, but she couldn't place whom. Weird. "I mean at the press conference," he said.  
  
The press conference. She could only imagine how she'd looked: for once the most rumpled and jittery journalist in a line of freshly pressed hopefuls, the way she'd nearly jumped out of her skin as Professor Kougaiji had spoken her name. He hadn't even been there in person, had panned a camera over them all via remote feed. "It was an honor to be given this opportunity," Yaone said in a stiff voice.  
  
Dokugakuji just laughed again. "Save that for your report. Kou won't care. You looked sad. I'll bet that's why he chose ya."  
  
He was being extremely personal for someone she'd barely met. And rather insulting! She took a deep breath. "Mister Dokugakuji. I'm a professional, and I've won awards for my work at WMN--"  
  
He cut her off with a wave of his palm. "Sorry, sorry. I know. Call me Doku, okay? You're awesome. I can't wait to work with ya." He turned and keyed a four-digit code into this new pad, and the door swung open with another long beep.  
  
Yaone wanted to protest that she couldn't say the same because she didn't know his work at all, but inside the room stood Professor Kougaiji.  
  
"Dokugakuji is correct. I knew you were the one I needed as soon as I saw you, Miss Max," he said.  
  
To Yaone's everlasting professional dismay, all she did for a moment was gape at him. She, who'd stood in the leeward shadows of lumbering Behemoths, who'd several times picked her way over rubble that still quaked from their massive footsteps, couldn't even pick up her own jaw from her chest.  
  
He wouldn't have looked so imposing in a mere photo; he was wearing a regular old white lab coat and wasn't especially tall, perhaps somewhere between her and Doku. He was good-looking, with his dark skin and long red hair pulled back into a ponytail, but then she'd seen pictures of him before.  
  
It was ... well, Yaone had read articles, interviews, where some stuffy old geezer from before would report about meeting someone noteworthy and "standing in the presence of greatness." She'd thought that kind of thing was stupid and pretentious, and still did in a way, but in that moment she could maybe understand those old men a little better. Professor Kougaiji had ... presence, yes. Poise. Something like that? Charisma. He had a steady gaze that managed to be both imperious and kind, like a prince greeting a visiting dignitary.  
  
The Dragon Whisperer, he was called. Even though Behemoths weren't really dragons and nobody could say they'd ever heard him whisper; still, he'd found a way to communicate with them.  
  
"P-- pleased to meet you, Doctor. I-- I've read your work on ethology from UCLA. It was fascinating." Yaone hated that she had to fight to keep her gaze up, to keep eye contact.  
  
Professor Kougaiji nodded and shook her hand briefly, then strode off to sit behind a desk with a computer terminal on it. "Thank you. But did you know I did years in olfaction as well? That's the important part. Anyway, I spent an hour this morning reading about you, and I'm even more convinced you're the one to tell my story with truth and interest."  
  
"Olf-- er, reading about me?" Yaone said, glancing over at Doku. He just leaned against the back of a sofa, smiling and nodding at her. Yaone thought perhaps she'd best find a seat of her own.  
  
"You were raised in the Church of Ancients. You were a Lottery winner," Kougaiji said, looking at her from over the top of his computer.  
  
She'd been right about that seat. Yaone slumped down into an armchair with a whoosh of cushions and took a couple of deep, panic-quelling breaths before answering. "Yes. I ran away. I changed my name--?"  
  
"Very sensible of you. Yet you've made a career out of reporting on the Behemoths. The creature-beat, they call it?"  
  
"I don't call it that," Yaone said in a quiet voice.  
  
"Also sensible. Respect is contagious," Dr. Kougaiji nodded.  
  
"I was a runaway, too," Doku offered. When she glanced back his way, he looked down and shuffled his feet on the carpet. "Different circumstances, but still pretty shitty. Now I work for Kou. A whole new life."  
  
She smiled back at him, understanding now some of his words from earlier. There were a wealth of stories here. Hers was ... well, she wanted to keep the past firmly where it belonged. Yes, she'd run away. She'd let down the Church by not dying in the jaws of a Behemoth.  
  
When the Behemoths had first appeared, had emerged from their billion-year slumber deep in the Earth a quarter century ago, it had been feared they'd devastate humanity with their roamings and ground-chomping and infighting. Fear and a period of lawlessness bred superstition, and Yaone's parents had been sucked into the Church of Ancients, which claimed new power and prophecy for the powerless.  
  
They worshipped the Behemoths -- the Dragons -- and some sects even sacrificed to them. Her parents had been thrilled when Yaone had been chosen by lottery from among the cult's youth to save them all for another three prophesied years.  
  
The jerks. Like a Behemoth, fifty times the size of a dinosaur, would have noticed her tumbling down its gullet. She would have been like a single krill to a whale.  
  
They weren't mammals, though, or even reptiles or birds. They had fur, sort of. More like armor. They could breathe fire and they did fly, sometimes. Sometimes they ate each other. They didn't even really eat people; they did seem to randomly eat chunks of earth that often had people on them.  
  
Until science, not mysticism, had triumphed and Professor Kougaiji had discovered how to speak with them. It was said that he'd redirected at least two Behemoths away from heavily populated areas where humanity now clustered, building terraced farms that Behemoths couldn't easily trample. And saved the dwindling military a lot of work and North America from yet more doses of nuclear radiation, to boot.  
  
Yaone would soon know the truth. She had been plucked from a group once again, this time to be the one, single journalist through whom the professor would report to what remained of the world.  
  
Dr. Kougaiji broke the stretched silence. "Most of my research is up here," he said, pointing at his head. "Otherwise the government would not be working with me and would have overrun me long ago. But would you like to see the laboratory first, anyway?"  
  
"I'd love to," Yaone told him.  
  
***  
  
The second time Yaone went to Dr. Kougaiji's castle, it was for an adventure. He was taking her on a live excursion. To "talk" to Behemoths.  
  
It wasn't talking, really, he'd said. There was some sound and gesture involved, but mostly it was scent: olfaction. That had sure gotten the world excited, had gotten her offers of money from companies that produced perfumes but now hoped to win some new, fat government contract. Unfortunately, Yaone couldn't tell them what scents, because she didn't know.  
  
"Not surprising, huh? The Behemoths smell awful, am I right?" Doku had said that first time, grinning at her surprise.  
  
They did, though scientists had not yet discovered the reason why. They could never get an intact Behemoth to let them dissect it, and the few the world militaries had been able to destroy had been exploded and irradiated beyond usefulness.  
  
The laboratory was where Dr. Kougaiji cooked up the scents he used. He never did a final mixture or even decided on a specific release schedule, however, until he was in the field and could assess the situation.  
  
"The first time out was scary as hell!" Even though he was sitting right next to Yaone, Doku had to shout to be heard over the noise of the military-loaned helicopter as they rode to the Behemoth site near what had once been the US-Canada border. They were alone except for the pilot, who was with the organization; Dr. Kougaiji had gone ahead in another chopper, not wanting to risk "his people" alongside him should something happen. A few JA military Blackhawks full of soldiers accompanied them to the rear.  
  
"I can only imagine. I'm terrified now," Yaone shouted back.  
  
"You'll be great," Doku said, squeezing her hand, briefly. Friendly-like. She appreciated the support, especially around anything to do with Dr. Kougaiji, who was nice but on a different, weirder level from everyone else, and who did work that was, frankly, alarming. Doku pointed at his camera. "Couple of clips?"  
  
"Go for it," Yaone said, and turned on her mic. Like her first interview, in both the lab and back in the sitting room later, she wouldn't be live. But it would be thrilling viewing anyway.  
  
Doku gave her a three, two, one with his fingers, and Yaone put on her TV face.  
  
"This is Yaone Max for World Media Network," she yelled, cupping a hand over her earpiece to be sure the sound was working. "I'm sitting here in a Joined Americas Military Lakota, heading for a Behemoth observation site with Professor Kougaiji and crew. I'm going to try and get as close as safely possible to the action, so be sure to stay tuned!"  
  
Doku thumbs-upped her, then panned to get some shots of the interior of the chopper, and then down to show the countryside passing far below.  
  
He wasn't Gojyo, but he wasn't bad, Yaone had learned. Her editors back at the studio had barely bitched at all about the raw video she'd brought them a couple of weeks ago. Doku had been doing personal videography for Dr. Kougaiji as well as serving as his ... friend? Bodyguard? His pretty much constant companion, anyway.  
  
She'd even wondered if they were "together" together. She didn't think so, though. Doku smiled at her an awful lot, and he'd come in the car to pick her up. He'd chatted that he followed her news feed and set up alerts for her stories on Dr. Kougaiji's network.  
  
Yaone had thought she might be weirded out by that, but surprisingly, she wasn't. It was kind of sweet, and he was pretty cute.  
  
She never dated; she'd experimented in college, of course, but she thought of herself as too messed up to ever have a real, normal relationship -- or what passed for one these days. She saved her game face for TV and then went home and locked the doors and told herself that magic didn't exist.  
  
She wondered what his own "shitty situation" had been. It certainly couldn't be as fucked up as hers.  
  
As they neared the site, they could see where the Behemoth had been; the thick, northern forest had been cleared in a quarter-mile swath down to tumbled dust. She could smell it, too, mixed with the green of vegetation and the smoke from its passage. The nasty smell was ... kind of like sulfur, but organic, too.  
  
Dr. Kougaiji ordered a halt and the choppers landed on the edge of a Behemoth-created cliff. He didn't want the noise to disturb his work; he wouldn't even use a motorized vehicle to get closer. He ordered Doku and Yaone and their escort to stay above and skittered off down the cliff on foot, carrying a bag. Nobody could even steal the bag, because only he knew what to do with it.  
  
The soldiers set up a temporary HQ. All Doku would say about their obedience was that Kou's organization and the military had "an arrangement." Somehow, that was even more surprising to Yaone than the fact that he was independently wealthy and weird and that he talked with Behemoths: he got the government to do what he asked.  
  
Desperate times, her parent would have said. Somehow, she still missed them. Sometimes.  
  
Doku and Yaone shot a couple of clips atop the cliff, interviewed some soldiers.  
  
"They're all so young and nervous. Boys and girls," Yaone whispered to Doku in a quiet moment afterwards.  
  
"They're like us," he said. "All they know is the time of the Behemoths. The old guard would have been a lot different, I guess."  
  
"Why are they carrying guns? Those wouldn't stop a Behemoth."  
  
Doku scowled. "Sometimes Survivalists follow the Behemoths, too."  
  
Doku and Yaone and the soldiers ate energy bars and drank water -- no cooking, no coffee. Doku eventually got a call that Dr. Kougaiji was set up.  
  
He and Yaone went back to the edge of the cliff and could see the professor, far below, his coat white against the dead landscape. He wore the lab coat even for field work. He waved a finger around and then fired a silent scent bomb in some chosen direction. Yaone could barely see, but it looked as if he was doing something with his hands in front of his chest. Almost as if he was praying.  
  
"He looks like a wizard. Like he's doing a spell," Yaone whispered to Doku, who stood close.  
  
"Science is magic, in a way," he said.  
  
"Magic doesn't exist." The earth shook, then shook harder. Yaone's stomach collapsed. "Oh, hell, it's coming this way!"  
  
Yaone covered the things, but she wasn't stupid. She always stayed behind them if she could; she couldn't report on them if she was stomped or gobbled with a hunk of landscape.  
  
"It's okay," Doku whispered back, his breath harsh and urgent in her ear. Still, he stayed close as her legs backed her away, toward the treeline.  
  
"Stand down but be wary," the CO was saying to his young soldiers.  
  
The rumbling grew louder and louder. Yaone wanted to curl up in a ball, but she forced herself to report: Doku recorded the scene, thumbs-upping her only slightly shaky editorial. "One is very close, I can hear it and smell it, oh, goodness," she said, just managing not to curse on record. Shit, she could hear it breathing--  
  
\--Doku put a hand to his ear and listened to something unseen, then looked up at Yaone and grinned. "Kou says come see. No camera, though. No audio."  
  
"Does he understand what the news is?" Yaone said, being perhaps a little shrill, but she wasn't sure she wanted to come see. She wanted to climb a tree. She wanted helicopter-flying lessons.  
  
"He understands that he's going to show you something that he doesn't want anyone at home to try."  
  
"That sounds even worse," Yaone said.  
  
"It'll be all right," Doku said, grabbing her hand. She let him, and held on tightly. He seemed so solid and sure and unfazed, but there was excitement and caring in his eyes, too.  
  
Oh, what the hell did she have to live for, anyway? Stepping through monster shit? Reporting on lost lives?  
  
"Okay. I'll trust you," she said, and followed.  
  
And there, just below the edge of the cliff, was a Behemoth. Its massive snout seemed only a few yards away, was coming closer as Dr. Kougaiji waved his hands in S-shapes, like the Chant of Beseeching. Calling upon the power of the core, of the heavens ...  
  
No, that wasn't it. He was squeezing something noisy in his fingers, like a ... like a dog-clicker. And he was popping the lids off tubes and then discarding them, and the thing was watching him. Shit, it was close, black and blotting out the horizon and even the sunlight. Yaone locked her knees together so she wouldn't pee in her underwear.  
  
Doku put his free hand to his ear. "Kou says come closer."  
  
Yesss ... Yaone walked, Doku pulling her down over the tumbled rocks. Thank fuck she'd worn sensible sneakers -- she'd been Chosen, after all. This was her fate, to walk right into its mouth, or maybe its nostril, big enough to drive a truck through.  
  
In the end she wasn't devoured. She walked right up to it, holding her breath, patting the fine not-quite hairs along its cheek. She did it twice, then looked at her hand, and then sort of floated backwards, away from it. It let her. Holy hell, it let her get away.  
  
"I knew you were the perfect choice," Dr. Kougaiji said, his smile brilliant and clench-toothed and a little wild.  
  
"Someday he'll ride one as it flies, see if he doesn't," Doku said.  
  
"I'm flying now," Yaone said with the last of her breath, and then she threw herself on Doku, wrapped him in her arms and legs and kissed him until she didn't remember why.  
  
  
***  
  
  
The third time Yaone went to Professor Kougaiji's laboratory because Doku had asked her on a date.  
  
They didn't actually go to the complex straightaway; Doku rode in the car to her place and they went back out into the mountains, to what Doku called "an old inn run by a one-eyed guy I know."  
  
The Lonely Pine Inn was indeed old, a former skiing lodge that had been built before Yaone's parents had been born but had survived the Incursion of '04. It was built from thick, heavy criss-crossed logs and hunkered in a small valley that was still green, still boasted a few tall, living trees from before. Tendrils of summer ivy crawled up the building's corners and over it its roof. One gigantic pine, blasted on top and green on the bottom, clung to a ridge in the rear of the tiny valley, both giving the place a name and standing sentinel to the devastation surrounding the oasis.  
  
The owner was much younger than Yaone had expected, near to her own age, and was missing one eye as promised. He seemed to be running the place alone. He smiled at them politely but distantly and invited them to make whatever drinks they liked at his little bar. When he took their food order, he went to the back to cook it himself.  
  
The place was quiet like that; the only other customers were a couple of guys who looked like bikers. They were wearing tall boots and long black leather coats with lots of buckles. They were pretty friendly, though, and Yaone and Doku had some beer and chatted with them a bit as they waited for their meal. They were on a survey Down Below, the guys said, whatever that meant.  
  
"Interesting critters you have out here," one of them said, smiling over a cigarette.  
  
"The big ones or the little ones?" Doku joked.  
  
"The really fucking massive ones, of course," the other guy said, giving everyone a laugh.  
  
The guys took off when the food was ready, and Yaone and Doku were left alone again, this time in lantern-light.  
  
"I, um. You look different. I mean, you, uh, look really pretty with your hair down," Doku said. His face flushed so red the scar across his nose stood out even more darkly.  
  
"Oh? Oh, uh, thanks," Yaone said, feeling her toes curl in her sandals at how adorable it was. Still, she was really awful at this, wasn't she? Her colleagues somehow did this sort of thing all the time.  
  
At least Doku was easier to talk to on a personal level than most guys she knew, and gracious as well: he hadn't embarrassed her by mentioning once how she'd shoved her tongue down his throat and then fainted, of all things.  
  
Was she even worthy of his attention? It was just ... she'd thought she'd been thrust into an exciting new world when she'd stolen her own life and run away. Gone to a regular school. And then in the newsroom, on location, she'd felt like she'd been living in the thick of that new world. But being allowed a peek into Professor Kougaiji's organization, being with Doku, had made her realize that there were people behind it all. The ones who shaped existence. It was like poking a hand through the roof and realizing the sky was just another room.  
  
"I. Um. I feel like ..." Yaone set down her fork and just said it. "It's like I'm a whole different person than I was a week ago, you know?"  
  
"Kou can do that to you," Doku said, laughing. "I grew up... well, let's just say my mom was a Survivalist. My dad was just gone. After the crap I've been through, I feel like the luckiest guy in the world to work for Kou. So I know exactly what you're talking about."  
  
"I thought you might." Yaone smiled at him. She kicked her sandals off under the table and rubbed her bare toes on the smooth wooden floor.  
  
"The only thing I regret about running off was the little brother I left at home. I miss him."  
  
"Maybe he made it out, too," Yaone said, reaching across the table to lay her fingers on Doku's hand. Should she have done that? He'd looked so sad for a moment, though now he was smiling at their hands, so she supposed she'd done okay. "I mean, maybe he's living in Denver, even. A nice, normal life."  
  
"I sure hope so." Doku twiddled his fingers under hers and waggled his eyebrows until she laughed and drew her hand back to her dinner. "Me'n him, we used to sneak off through the woods to a shack in this nearby town where this guy had some of those standing video games hidden in his basement. Pac-Man, Frogger. We'd beg quarters off the townspeople and play, and this guy made so much money."  
  
"I never saw those, but I read about them. I somehow still can't believe companies used to spend money developing such technology! Fun things, instead of communications and fireproof bunkers."  
  
"And weapons to try an' kill Behemoths," Doku said, scowling at his plate of noodles.  
  
Yaone nibbled on a piece of very tasty teriyaki chicken. Imagine, Asian food in a mountain cabin! "At least we still have movies, even if the new ones this year all sucked. Maybe ... maybe Professor Kougaiji could convince the Behemoths to all just. I dunno. Kill each other?"  
  
"Well, I can't say if he's working on anything like that."  
  
"Can't? Or won't?" said the reporter in Yaone.  
  
Doku just winked at her. "You'll have to ask him yourself."  
  
Yaone's ribs gave a yearning little squeeze at her insides, either at the wink or at the thought of being in the midst of ... all that, again. Probably both. "I don't know if I'm invited back."  
  
Doku leaned back in his chair and gave her a jaunty little hand-wave. "You can come with me tonight. I have something I'd like to show ya. I mean, um. Somethin' fun, but not in a ... a bad kind of way. I mean, I'm not trying to push you or anythin'--"  
  
"Sure," Yaone said, and started rubbing her big toe along the inside of her calf.  
  
They finished dinner, chatting about the schools they'd gone to. It turned out Doku had finished high school at the ripe old age of twenty and then had done a two-year certificate in photography and videography. A few years ago he'd managed to catch some personal footage of some Behemoths on one of their short flights, and the professor had found him on the net not long afterwards. Dr. Kougaiji had access to communications and research resources beyond Yaone's journalistic dreams; olfaction must have paid very well.  
  
They sat close in the limo on the ride to the complex, so close their thighs pressed together. And it turned out that what Doku wanted to show her was a video game, one of the big ones they'd talked about earlier. Space Invaders. Dr. Kougaiji had acquired it as a surprise for Doku some time back.  
  
"He still makes me use my own quarters, the cheapskate," Doku joked, but Yaone thought that the professor must value him a great deal.  
  
They drank some of the professor's very fine and very rare French wine and used Doku's quarters to play, and Yaone giggled and did terribly. It should have all been quite ridiculous, but Yaone let that be okay. She drank in the silly with her pores, it seemed, stealing moments from the world where new hopes were born. They knew who she was here.  
  
Yaone kissed Doku again, long and good, when he saved her spaceship bacon for the third time. Afterwards Doku blushed and pressed their foreheads together. His fingers pressed hesitantly into her waist, sending pleasant chills up and down her spine.  
  
"When do you have to work?" he whispered.  
  
"When they call me. But as you've probably noticed, I haven't checked my messages."  
  
"You can. Uh. Use our phone?"  
  
She should. But she could feel the beat of her own heart, shipping blood to every deep and distant bit of flesh she owned, could feel the tremble in his shoulders under her fingers. Those things were much more interesting to her at the moment. "Screw that," Yaone said.  
  
"Oh. Okay," Doku breathed, a hopeful, happy sigh against her lips.  
  
They avoided the elevators and crept up the back stairs to Doku's room like guilty students in the boys' dorms, though the bare stone under Yaone's feet made her feel more like a castle servant, escaping the notice of the master.  
  
Doku's room at least was modern and cozy, and they tumbled into it, into the iron-framed bed that was just big enough for the two of them. It squeaked. Loudly.  
  
They made out for a few minutes, side by side, slow but exciting. Doku's big hands traced Yaone's sides through her dress, stopping short at too much intimacy. Yaone was made a little more bold by wine and silliness and squeezed his ass, making him utter a pained grunt against her throat. But it really was a fantastic butt, and it belonged to a terrific guy. This whole thing was as simple as pie. Yaone wondered why she didn't do it more often.  
  
"Thank you for staying," Doku said, quietly, quieter than the bedsprings, anyway. Yaone would have laughed at the solemn tone of his voice, but he was licking her ear in a way that made her all tickly and wet between the thighs.  
  
"Thank you for inviting me," she said, equally formal if a little breathless.  
  
"Can't believe you don't have a boyfriend." His hand paused, hovering just over the curve of her breast, and he raised his eyebrows at her. "Wait. Do you?"  
  
"No!" Yaone laughed, arching into his hand and mmming at the warmth of his callused palm on her nipple. "The only guy I hang out with is my cameraman. He's cute, but I don't think he's into me. If you know what I mean."  
  
"I sure hope so." His lopsided grin down at her was familiar, and Yaone realized that the person he reminded her of was the very one they were discussing -- Gojyo. The tilt of his head, the curve of his lips, his easy laugh. That was a little strange to realize. Was it possible that-- nah.  
  
"I don't do this very much, but should we be discussing other guys right now?" Yaone teased to banish the weirdness, hoping he hadn't noticed.  
  
He didn't seem to. He did notice her hand trailing down the inside of his thigh. "I don't either, but probably not," he breathed, and there ended the whole verbal discussion.  
  
That uncanny middle of the evening had nothing on its end, it turned out: Yaone woke to the shrill scream of an alarm.  
  
"Shit! Shit!" Doku had been on the wall side of the bed, and he scrambled over her to get out. On the way he tangled in a bit of sheet and tumbled face-first onto the floor with a thump that was audible even over the alarms. "Ow!"  
  
"Are you okay?" Yaone said, unable to think of anything better as her brain fired on all cylinders. All at once she wondered if the professor had a fireproof bunker of course he did find shelter find shelter, and she decided that if Doku had said "ow" he must not have been unconscious. She realized she was twisted in the covers herself and rolled to the side of the bed, yanking the sheets away as quickly as she could. Find shelter!  
  
"Yeah! I'm fine. Hah. Stay there." Doku was on his back, wriggling into his boxer shorts.  
  
"Stay here?!" Yaone was at least as shrieky as the alarms.  
  
"It's an intruder alert. Not a Behemoth," he said. His voice was muffled; he was digging under the bed for something.  
  
"Oh," Yaone said, allowing herself to breathe again. She closed her eyes and counted to six, trying to shut down the adrenaline. Then a thought formed that stopped her heart again. "Is it me?"  
  
"Hell, no. You're one of us."  
  
Yaone barely heard that one of us, as Doku was standing. He looked pretty good half-naked, but what caught her real attention was--  
  
"What in the world is that?"  
  
"Weapon? You look great, by the way."  
  
"I should say so," Yaone griped, meaning the giant, curved, Yaone-sized sword he was brandishing and not Yaone herself, but Doku was already at the door, peeking out. Then he slid through, the sword clanging on the doorframe.  
  
Still the alarms blared. Yaone plucked her flowered sundress from the floor to pull it on. It was lucky she'd worn it: easy off, easy on.  
  
Nobody was in the immediate hallway, but Yaone could hear feminine screeches and male shouts from nearby. She crept in the direction of the commotion to see what was going on, hugging the walls, barely wondering at her own walk into possible danger. She'd touched a Behemoth, for heaven's sake.  
  
She rounded a corner to see Doku holding his massive sword at the neck of a stranger who stood very still, hands in the air. He-- she? -- was clothed in white robes and was pointing a pistol at the ceiling. A red-haired teenage girl wearing pajamas was halfheartedly pummeling the stranger from the front.  
  
"Pervert!" she was yelling.  
  
"Get his gun! Lirin, grab it, stupid," Doku was shouting.  
  
"Jerk!"  
  
"I was trying to find Kougaiji," the stranger said in a deep voice that sounded pretty bored, considering the position he was in, what with the sword at his back and the angry girl at his front.  
  
"I've got it," Yaone said. She slipped in behind Doku to snatch the pistol from the stranger's hand.  
  
Guns! The Church eschewed them, and though Yaone had learned to use one in high school like everyone else, she'd never developed a taste for it. She flicked on the safety and nevertheless held the gun very loosely and carefully behind her.  
  
With the stranger disarmed, Doku eased the sword away from his jugular.  
  
"He was in my room!" the girl -- Lirin? -- bitched.  
  
"Oh, no. He's a priest. From the Church," Yaone moaned, for the man had turned to look at her. There was no mistaking the writing on the scroll he'd draped over his neck.  
  
He narrowed impossibly purple eyes at her, from under an unrealistic mop of golden hair. "You. Chosen, huh?"  
  
Yaone tightened her grip on the pistol and swung it forward to point it at him. "You can't take me," she said.  
  
"Yaone--"  
  
"I was looking for Kougaiji," the man repeated.  
  
"I'm here," said Dr. Kougaiji, just arrived at the scene. He was unaccompanied -- didn't he have security or something?-- and he spotted Yaone hovering behind Doku. "Oh, good, Yaone. You're here. I could use your help. Put down the gun, please. Lirin, shut the hell up!"  
  
"Hnh."  
  
"But ... But!"  
  
"My help?"  
  
Dr. Kougaiji sighed and turned. "Let's go."  
  
Once the alarms were silenced and the perimeter guards called off, he led them all to his sitting room, the one where Yaone had met him that first day. It was decided that Lirin, who it turned out was the professor's younger sister, was to be allowed into the meeting because it was she who'd been first intruded upon.  
  
It was only when Yaone caught Lirin staring at her chest that she realized she'd forgotten to put on her bra. She crossed her arms and also realized she still had the gun. She thumbed off the safety with a snick that was audible in the mostly quiet room.  
  
Dr. Kougaiji raised an eyebrow at her.  
  
"He's a priest, come to make trouble," Yaone said, raising her chin. "A charlatan."  
  
Dr. Kougaiji offered a tight smile. "No, he's real enough. What do you want?" he asked, turning to look at the priest. Real? Impossible.  
  
The priest relaxed in the chair and crossed one leg over the other, calm as if he'd been invited for tea. "Heard you talk to dragons."  
  
"You know that's not what they are."  
  
"I also heard that three days ago, you 'talked' to a creature that then destroyed a Church encampment. Yesterday."  
  
Dr. Kougaiji waved a dismissive hand. "Unlike you, they were not real. Child-sacrificers, most likely."  
  
Yaone started from her seat; it could have been her family ... But no, they were across the ocean. Child-sacrificing. Still, her voice mail at home was probably overloaded.  
  
"That's unconfirmed and irrelevant," the priest was saying. "It caught the notice of the higher-ups anyway, and they sent me here. Stop what you're doing."  
  
"Hah!" Dr. Kougaiji barked. "No way. But I will tell you that I didn't do anything, outside of what I normally do. Your mystics are your problem."  
  
"Was she there?"  
  
Yaone realized the priest had inclined his head in her direction. "I didn't do anything--" she began.  
  
"She was," the professor said, his grin toothy and gleeful.  
  
"Mmm-hmm."  
  
"I'm right here now," Yaone said loudly, standing and thumbing the pistol's safety on again so she wouldn't shoot anyone in her agitation. "And I'm no murderer. I'm a reporter. I didn't do anything. I touched it. I fainted from the sheer scope of it. That's all."  
  
Doku ah-hemm</>ed. Yaone kicked his bare leg with her bare foot.  
  
"Ow."  
  
"Hah, Doku, you jerk." That was Lirin.  
  
They were like a family -- a bickering family. Yaone's head hurt, even as she fought the urge to smile. "You're crazy. The world is crazy. Magic isn't real."  
  
"Yes it is," said the priest.  
  
Dr. Kougaiji held a palm up at Yaone, nodding his head in a calming gesture. Again it struck her, how his presence held authority just by its existence; regardless, she calmed. She took a deep breath and crossed her arms again.  
  
"It is, in a way," he said. "But just because it's real doesn't mean it's supernatural. Different methods. Study of the brain has been woefully lacking these last few years. That's why I need you now."  
  
"To study her brain?" Lirin giggled.  
  
"No, idiot. To be my intermediary. A link between different methods."  
  
The professor's fondly recriminating tone should have seemed out of place at such a moment and with his imperious manner, but somehow it only added to his draw. He was as charismatic as a priest, as any cult leader.  
  
Yaone began to suspect that she should feel as if she were in danger. He could have invited her here under false pretenses, needing her for ... whatever it was she'd do. Done. Even Doku could have been in on it--  
  
But no. Yaone had lived a life that had taught her to trust her instincts and experience both. What Dr. Kougaiji had done with the Behemoths had been real, she was sure. She'd touched one with her own fingers. That had also been real, just like Doku's fingers were that very moment as they curled about hers. She squeezed his hand back, hard.  
  
Yaone saw that Dr. Kougaiji was looking at her again. Everyone was looking at her, in fact. Somewhere in the back of her mind she realized yet again that she wasn't wearing a bra. But that was the least important thing that currently involved her. "I'm only a reporter. That's what I trained for, what people need me for."  
  
"I need that, too," Dr. Kougaiji said. "The church is -- unfortunately for it -- very secretive. Quite sad, in these days when public support and public hope could be so very useful. Yours is a voice the world will trust."  
  
He was right, Yaone realized. Not only about her. The Church ... divided people. Like the Survivalists, they separated themselves from the rest of the world.  
  
Such splits in ideology in the face of extinction from emerging, massive, powerful creatures had torn humanity apart, halting progress in its tracks, ruining nations. Yaone remembered the ship that she'd caught when she'd first run away from her warring homeland: full of refugees, people huddling in upon themselves at every groan of the ship, every splash of water in the distance.  
  
Her two reports on Dr. Kougaiji's organization, however, the scientific interview and the field trip, had galvanized talk and public opinion. Of supporting the sciences, of discovering new ways to live with the Behemoths instead of outrunning them or trying futilely to blast them and the landscape into nonexistence. A way out instead of a way down into nothing.  
  
"I think ... I would like to help," Yaone said.  
  
"Excellent." The grin Dr. Kougaiji gave her lit up his pale eyes in his dark-skinned face, and it seemed like the most sincere smile he'd offered her yet. "The next thing you could do, then, is to be the immediate link between my organization and the Church. Please tell this priest to leave."  
  
Oh, this was going to be fun. Yaone turned and looked down at the priest, who wore a bored scowl that seemed permanently written on his face. Too bad, for he'd have been quite good-looking otherwise. She had a feeling also that if she allowed herself to, she could have sensed the power in his posture, his gestures, his glares. But she was officially Over the Church.  
  
"Professor Kougaiji wants you to scram," she interpreted.  
  
"Awesome," Lirin interjected.  
  
The priest rolled his eyes and pushed himself out of the chair. He was quite graceful as well, for all he was leaving without grace. "Fine. Can I have my gun back?"  
  
Yaone turned to look at Dr. Kougaiji, but Doku drew her attention away with a touch to her shoulder. He made gentle waggly fingers at the gun. "How about we give it to 'im when he gets outside the gates?"  
  
"Sounds good." Yaone surrendered the pistol to Doku with what she hoped was hidden relief. Nasty things.  
  
"I take it you're not going to stop what you're doing?" the priest said.  
  
That was directed at Dr. Kougaiji, who replied only with a smile and a nod at Yaone. The smile was toothy, like the one he wore for Behemoths.  
  
"Oh, give me a fucking break." The priest sighed so heavily his robes fluttered, and then he looked at Yaone again.  
  
"I think I can safely say ... no," Yaone told him. "We'll see who saves the world first."  
  
"Tch. Yeah, we'll see. There's been interest from Above," the priest said, a parting shot as he was escorted out the door by Doku. Who was still wearing only his boxer shorts. Yaone only checked out his ass a little as he left.  
  
Her new family: it was a weird one.  
  
"I hope you come live here." Speaking of families, Lirin had stood and was linking her arm through Yaone's. "I need someone to talk to who isn't a scientist or that goober Doku or related to me."  
  
Yaone raised her eyebrows at Dr. Kougaiji, who nodded and then spun on his heel to sit at his desk. He slipped on a pair of glasses and then began typing at his computer terminal, seeming to take a few moments to realize that he hadn't actually replied. "I think that would be best, if you're amenable. Let me make some edits to this contract, and perhaps you can review it before you go?"  
  
"I'll be happy to," Yaone said, and left the room with Lirin. First order of business: a shower and her bra. Second would be to beg some breakfast. She was starving.  
  
***  
  
The next time Yaone came to Dr. Kougaiji's laboratory, it would be for business and for pleasure both. The contract was more than generous. And the work promised to be more rewarding, for all it might still involve monster shit.  
  
Once fed and bathed and clothed somewhat appropriately, she was ready to get started right away. But first she had to give her notice at work; it would have hurt her professional soul to do so via telephone. Then they'd be off to her apartment to collect her things. Doku was riding along to Denver with her, as the muscle.  
  
Yaone pecked Doku's fingers with her lips as he helped her into the car, just as he'd helped her out that first day. She got a sloppy kiss on her knuckles for her efforts. It was all really sappy, but Yaone figured that was okay. He was sort of her boyfriend now, and that's what boyfriends did, as far as she knew. He wasn't just the muscle to her, anyway.  
  
The folks at WMN weren't happy. At first the news director wanted to bitch her out for not answering her phone, and then for leaving. When he mentioned things like contracts and non-competing clauses ,Yaone told him that she would have Professor Kougaiji's legal team contact the station's legal team for any further discussion about such things. At that he backed off, and she kindly offered a few names of reporters who might be good at covering her beat. There were one or two who'd jump at the chance, in fact, who'd been angling for her job for months.  
  
With that out of the way, she and her ex-boss were able to part with some real regret on both sides. She'd enjoyed her work.  
  
Her real regret, however, was not being able to say goodbye to Gojyo. He was out, the desk said, but not on assignment. Nobody had any idea where he might be. Disappointed, Yaone left him a little note that said call you later?-- Y.  
  
Things got weird when she entered her apartment building and made her way up the stairs. Her apartment door was standing open and someone was clomping around inside. Too bad she didn't have that gun, after all.  
  
Still, somebody was messing with her things, the bastard. Yaone crept to the doorway and called inside. Her knees didn't knock at all, bless them and their newfound bravery. "Hello. Who's there? I have security guards downstairs--"  
  
"Yaone! Aw man, I've been worried about you--"  
  
It was Gojyo, bright red hair and all. It was a colorful blur as he swept forward and embraced her in a giant hug, barely giving her time to breathe out her near-panic. "How did you get in here?" she had to know.  
  
"Secret ways," he grinned down at her. "Sorry. Look, I was worried. Nobody'd heard from you since before yesterday, an' I've been calling and calling and you didn't answer, and I knew you've been hanging out with the weirdos in the mountains--"  
  
"Oh, they're not weirdos. I'm going to work for them. I'll tell you all about it later. Hey, come down and meet somebody."  
  
"Somebody?"  
  
"Somebody I work with," Yaone laughed, saving the rest of the story for later. She dragged him down the stairs by the wrist, and then towards where Doku was shifting things in the trunk of the limo. "He's a great guy. A cameraman, like you."  
  
"'Zis who you been cheating on me with? Ho-leee shit."  
  
"Cheating? Hah. This is Dokugakuji, uh--" and Yaone realized once again that she didn't know if that was Doku's first name or his last. Guess that meant they had a lot of ground to cover, she thought. Her next thought was that neither of the guys was listening to her, or even looking at her.  
  
"Gojyo?" Doku said, staring at Gojyo, open-mouthed.  
  
"You gotta be shitting me," Gojyo said, staring back at Doku.  
  
That was when Yaone realized that things had just gotten really, really weird.  


**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! Thank you to the requester for the prompt.


End file.
